Merenstein Offers Insight on "Judicial Notice" and Information Found on the Internet

03/31/2009

Bruce Merenstein, a partner in the Firm's Philadelphia office, contributed “The Infallible Internet?” to The Legal Intelligencer Blog on March 31. In the article, he notes that the Internet provides a seemingly infinite amount of information. However, most Internet users are well aware that the validity of the information they find may be questionable. Despite this, courts have been willing to take “judicial notice” of supposedly irrefutable facts simply because those facts appear on the web. In both state and federal court in Pennsylvania, judicial notice may be taken of a fact that is “not subject to reasonable dispute.” Such facts include those that are “capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.” Bruce provides examples of cases in which courts point to newspaper or corporate websites as such infallible sources.